I sincerely think that the spreadsheet is among the most ingenious pieces of software ever developed. I am just old enough to remember VisiCalc (and clearly re

I sincerely think that the spreadsheet is among the most ingenious pieces of software ever developed. I am just old enough to remember VisiCalc (and clearly remember when Lotus 1-2-3 was new). I remember being impressed by lots of things back then (the word processor, the very first PC flight simulator, text adventures, very early GUIs). But as amazing as all of that was, I really feel like the spreadsheet required more lateral thinking than most of these other things. Old ledger books were clearly part of the inspiration, but just today I was wondering if computer organization itself had inspired the idea. With high-level languages, you don't get as much of a sense of computing being all about arranging things on a kind of grid. Store this here, store that there, now combine those those things and put them over here . . . The spreadsheet abstracted that not just into a more convenient set of high-level operations, but into a real UI that people could understand. From a design standpoint, it was really a massive quantum leap. Once in a while someone dreams up something really clever to do with a computer. That was definitely one of those moments.